Hey there! FYI I really appreciated this comment. The response to my comment here convinced me that Lemmy isn’t really the place for me. I popped back today to look something up, and I wanted to make sure you got a friendly hello after seeing your response.

I totally agree with everything you said. Having shared practices for remembrance and an established “typical” way to demonstrate care for deceased people is a significant part of maintaining social cohesion and so useful for giving individuals an outlet for grief.

The way an entire industry has emerged to capitalize on loss and paij sickens me, but that part is a whole different conversation.

My education is in archaeoligy, and my primary interest was American deathways. I’ve probably spent more time thinking about contemporary death rites and remembrance than I’ve thought about anything else as an adult.

Anyway, I hope you’re well! Keep on being a cool person.

Ritual and ceremony are deeply important aspects of the human experience. What cultures do with their dead is way, way up there with foodways and adornment when it comes to cultural significance.

The increasingly common view in the West that elaborate death rites are unimportant is really new when compared to the rest of human history. It’s probably a postmodern thing? If I’m right about that, that would mean the less reverential attitude towards traditional deatg ceremony is like 110ish years old.

Compared to the 200,000-300,000 years Homo Sapiens have been around (or 45,000 years ago if we only want to discuss the length of time that Northern European-style deathways have most likely been practiced), 100 years isn’t a lot to change that cultural inertia.

Sorry, I know this is a Wendy’s. Just a frosty, thanks.

Nanny state foolishness. It’s just crewed spaceflight, not rocket science.

With that baby around, I think it’s you who needs to worry about surviving a 20-story fall.

My kinda person. If they were local and I saw the post, I’d be there for sure.

Dopes to Infinity and Spine of God are stoner metal bangers, JIC anyone here isn’t familiar with their stuff from before Powertrip.

I’ve also liked that their later stuff walks a line between glam & sludge metal.

They meant 24 metric hours.

I’m a light sleeper with a loud mind, as well, so this kind of thing has always been a problem for me. The two main things I find helpful may not do the trick for you, but here goes:

First, trying to force myself back to sleep always just ramps my brain up worse and makes it more difficult than it already was to fall back asleep. I stopped trying to force the issue, which has counterintuitively sped up the time it takes me to fall back asleep. I don’t get up or engage my mind with anything significant, but if I’m awake, I’ll put soft music on my earbuds or scroll on my phone set to the dimmest setting. I may not fall back to sleep immediately, but I’ve found that lowering the pressure on myself to fall back asleep makes it happen more readily than when I spend 2 hours and 45 minutes being like “if I fall asleep right now, I can still get another 3 hours. go to sleep. fall asleep. sleep will happen… now!”

Second, I’ve increased my oversell magnesium intake. I know you said no substances, but I feel like this is different. There have been a few studies–popular science type stuff, nothing peer reviewed that I know of–indicating that magnesium improves sleep quality and the ability to return to sleep if woken up. Might be the placebo effect, but I don’t care because I’ve noticed an improvement.

Sorry you have to deal with this flavor of insomnia, too. Super sucks.

I’d try it

I worked in grocery stores for several years in my 20s. That was 10 years ago, but I still remember so many vegetable PLUs and fly through self-checkout most times.

I’M HIT

powpowpowpowpowpowpowpowpowpow

I hope he’ll be okay. With $2 billion liquidated, his cash on hand is only the average lifetime earnings of 1,176 Americans.

Assuming the average American starts working at age 18 and stops working at 67, that’s just 57,624 years’ worth of American wages.

It’s a shame he’s considering exercising another $6 billion of his stock between now and the end of the year just to get by.

He liquidated 12 million Amazon shares for approximately $2 billion last week. It’s the capital gains on that sale that OP’s article is referring to.

Unless you meant cash, in which case you’re probably right. I don’t think his brokerage settled the sale with briefcases of $100 bills.

When I’m really stressed out, I’ll put on repetitive beep boop music and draw floor plans on graph paper.

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Jokes aside, I would murder a coworker with my bare hands on the third instance of this.

I am loathe to praise any entity benefitting from student loans, but I will say that Great Lakes was competent. The website functioned, they had [mostly] enough customer service people, their customer service people could answer your questions, and they billed you the correct amount at predictable intervals.

It’s a sad bar, but it’s more than MOHELA can manage. Godspeed, friend.

I was moved from Great Lakes to Nelnet a couple years ago, and then almost immediately transferred to MOHELA.

It’s astounding how shitty MOHELA is. It’s almost impressive. Literally every single aspect of the experience is godawful. The only way it could be worse is if they actively tried making it worse, and even then I think they’d probably accidentally improve a few things.

There are local prefixes I will never answer no matter what. I’m looking at you, 243 and 422.

I love their recipe for no bake cookies, though! Just 12-15 minutes at 375°, and you’re good to go.